Pre-sales of ‘disappointing’ iPhone 4S fail to disappoint

Despite assorted cries of disappointment following Apple’s iPhone 4S unveiling last Tuesday, pre-sales of the company’s latest smartphone have seemingly been nothing short of stellar. But this is hardly a surprise. AT&T sold more than 200,000 iPhone 4S handsets during the first 12 hours of pre-order availability, making this the carrier’s most successful iPhone launch to date according to a company spokesperson. No other carriers have revealed pre-order figures thus far, but Apple took in a total of 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders across all carriers and distribution channels last year on the first day of pre-sales availability. That figure was a record for Apple at the time. Read on for more.

As of Friday evening, less than one day after the iPhone 4S became available for pre-order, delivery estimates from Apple’s online store slipped from October 14th to “1-2 weeks,” indicating inventory from Apple’s first round of iPhone shipments has already been depleted. Apple’s new iPhone 4S features the same glass and metal build as its predecessor, but it includes an upgraded 8-megapixel camera and a dual-core A5 processor as well as Apple’s new voice-driven personal assistant software, Siri.

Despite preliminary complaints from an apparent minority, analysts still have high expectations for Apple’s latest smartphone and the iPhones 3GS and 4, which both saw price drops as Apple’s new iPhone model was unveiled. Wedge Partners’ Brian Blair, who modeled for an incremental iPhone refresh amid rumors of a redesigned iPhone 5, estimates that Apple shipped between 24 million and 25 million iPhones in the September quarter. The analyst sees that figure growing to 27 million units in Apple’s December quarter.

This article seems to completely forget AT&T’s iPhone 4 preorder fiasco from last year. AT&T’s systems during the first 12 hours were literally unable to process *any* preorders. They might have had a few hours before they went down, but down they went. Specifically, the system that checked for upgrade availability was down, meaning that even if you went to an AT&T store or called them on the phone, you still COULD NOT preorder.

In short, in order to be the most successful first 12 hours of an iPhone launch in AT&T’s history they would have only needed to sell more than they had for the 3gs–which frankly would have been nearly impossible not to manage.

To put the whole thing in perspective, 200k units in 12 hours is less than 5 per second, which doesn’t really sound that incredible to me. I have no doubt that the iPhone 4s sales will be *great* in the long run, but most AT&T customers still don’t have their upgrade availability yet. In fact, AT&T very suspiciously pushed upgrade dates for people who bought their iPhone 4’s on release date from 11/21 to 11/25. Yeah, you got that right. They pushed back our release dates intentionally to put them on Black Friday. No doubt so they can put a really positive spin on Black Friday numbers for their stockholders.

Anonymous

That’s not true, I preordered mine last year at AT&T around 10am and received it launch day.

http://twitter.com/Faxmonkey Faxwell Q Monkington

Oh the system didn’t go down right away, but it totally went down. I’m not saying nobody preorder ever, but that at a certain point nobody could anymore.

Anonymous

@twitter-63951366:disqus , “AT&T’s systems during the first 12 hours were literally unable to process *any* preorders…”

This might be true, but don’t forget that AT&T for the first time is no longer the only carrier that is selling iPhones. There are now two other carriers that are also selling it as well. Despite all that, it has still broke their all time record. This is a pretty amazing achievement.

@zapote21:disqus , “And 198,456 of them were 3GS users who are tired of waiting and had to upgrade..”

Hmm… besides the fact that you have absolutely no proof that is the case, both Sprint and Verizon have also indicated that they are both very, very please with their preorders. Since neither Sprint or Verizon were carrying the iPhone 3GS when it came out two years ago, these customers are definitely not upgrading their existing 3GS to the 4S. So regardless of how you want to look at it, this new iPhone 4S will have unprecedented sales that will blow all analyst’s expectations away. I think the only limitation to Apple sales of their new iPhone 4S will be only limited by their current manufacturing capacity.

http://twitter.com/Faxmonkey Faxwell Q Monkington

I doubt it will really blow any analysts away. To the contrary, the analysts are always pretty optimistic with regards to Apple products. And while I personally do think the 4S is fairly disappointing, I’ll still be getting one because there’s really no reason not to upgrade since I can just sell my old one for the cash it costs me. Of course, like a lot of AT&T customers, I’ll have to wait till black Friday since AT&T though it would be funny to push people’s upgrades *back* to 11/25 (mine *was* 11/21 before the iPhone announcement) just so they can announce earth shattering sales (up 500% from the day before Black Friday!)

So yeah. The sales will be huge. Apple pretty much phoned this one in, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s still a new iPhone. Even if all they did was put a unicorn sticker on it, we’d all go buy the new iPhone 4u and say it was the greatest thing ever.

Anonymous

You want proof? I’ll give you two pieces:

1) I was dead set on upgrading my 4 to the 5, but now the only person I’m buying a new iphone for is my girlfriend, who is upgrading from a 3GS. Had Apple announced the 5, with a larger screen and redesigned body style, they would have had two phones sold to my household. After talking to several friends, and reading non-fanboy forum threads on the matter, this seems to be the common sentiment.

2) There is already a historical precedent set for this situation. Sales data showed that the majority of people who purchased the 3GS, aside from those who were first time buyers, were upgrading from the original iPhone, while 3G owners mostly held off until the 4 was released.

No one is arguing that the 4S won’t be successful, thanks largely to new partnerships with Verizon and Sprint, but what many are saying is they are disappointed with it in the same way they were the 3GS, and correctly assert that Apple would have sold many, many more units had they released a proper upgrade, and not simply an incremental update. Apple simply satisfied the market, when it could have absolutely blown it away as it has in the past and is famous for, and that is final word on the matter.

Anonymous

At this point iam willing to get a tracfone with the green backlight before this dumb shite nothing different to speak off.

Anonymous

well..i bought one to sell it on ebay and make some money to finance my nexus prime…

mercado

My iPhone is great for making me seem important while I sip mocha chai lattes. I can pretend I am controlling a small country while in fact I live in my parents’ basement.

Bringit

…he said, while typing on his cheap Android phone from his parents basement.

Anonymous

he said, while living in his mummys basement writing on his ancient now iCrap

Bringit

“ancient” iPhone still is far better than anything else on the market.

Anonymous

Winning.

TechFanNY

It amazes me how iPhone users don’t get insulted by Apple. They deliver a phone that has a dual core which has been out in the market since April. The same design as the iphone 4. No high speed for VZW or Sprint. Same small screen yet all the iPhone fans are excited about it. I just don’t understand. I was insulted by Apple’s presentation and lack of innovation. I will give them credit last year they brought the retina display which was very good and pushed screen displays to get better. This year they just played catch up and all the users are defending Apple? Don’t you want more innovation? How about at least pushing the hardware like maybe 2ghz dual core. A 4.3 inch display and new redesign that makes non iPhone users take a second look at it. They just copied BBM and gtalk for they version of iMessage. WOW how original. The pull down notification which is a copy off Android and point WebOS. Nothing about this unveiling is exciting to the smartphone world. But this is for the non techie people, every day joe/jane who don’t know any better. I see Apple still has them hooked and scared to try something new. Maybe something new would be better. Maybe it might be worse. What is sad is how people are scared of change.

Anonymous

Well, why should they? Us Goofans (aka Apple Haters) don’t get insulted by Google when they use us as guinea pigs. Right?

Anonymous

still coming out with rubbish…tut tut your getting close to being number one idiot and knocking scroat from the top..:D and this is coming from an android user

Anonymous

How’s the battery life on that hypothetical 2ghz chip you’re referring to?

And the A5 has been out since April, but that was the iPad version. Regardless, that chip still runs circles around Tegra 2s and other chips. The GPU is sick.

Also, iOS 5 adds Siri, includes exclusive features like AirPlay, and adds all the features iOS had been missing, refined. Oh and the hardware also includes BT 4.0 which > NFC.

http://www.sk1wbw.wordpress.com Wayne Williams

Not sure who took that picture, but they deserve an award. That pic is Teh Shibby.

Anonymous

I don’t think anyone is surprised by this. Its Apple therefore the best. It doesn’t matter whats inside or how much it costs. Just as long as my friends see me holding one. That’s enough for me.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MRXKXFO5F7NVWFJHNZFO7NEHVY Big R

There will never be a cure for stupidity. It is mind boggling how people blindly spend large amounts of money on old technology and only do so because Apple says so…

lemmings

Beatsbynof

I actually work for a carrier and more more android users are switching to the iphone, the ios is just so stable, and with just apple making the iphone you see less factory defects in phones. You should see how many htc phones have charging port issues, and how many times I have to hard reset a android device, open platform is a bad idea.

Anonymous

Over 1M iPhone 4S pre-sold in 24 hours. Wow!!!

BGR should create a news blog that will read as “Zach Epstein DISAPPOINTED for the SUCCESS of iPhone 4S, FALLS FROM DISGRACE TO IRRELEVANCE.”

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QAILVW6RGGAJKAASNRRMVDAW4Q Travis R

It would be interesting to see how many of those pre-sales were to current iPhone 4 owners compared to pre-iPhone 4 owners, non-iPhone owners and Sprint customers. The 4S isn’t a disappointing device, I don’t think that’s what anyone has been saying, it’s merely a disappointing “upgrade” from the iPhone 4, especially considering the additional 3 months that were added to the usual product release cycle.

Anonymous

I can’t believe….My best friend’s mom makes 87 USD an hour on the computer. She has been out of job for 10 months but last month her check was 6398 USD just working on the computer for a few hours. Read about it here…http://MoreMoney

http://twitter.com/axion101 Lee Davi

I know. It’s soooo crazy to care about features and functions. Who care about quad core processors, NVIDIA graphics, or more RAM. That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that Apple has purty colors.